Times 24,432 Antithesis meets the last theorem

Author   dorsetjimboPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
SolVing time: 20 minutes

I enjoyed this puzzle but was never particularly stretched by it. I found the clue style interesting and was delighted to have no boring poets or authors but instead to be joined by the interesting Hegel and the brilliant Fermat. I had no gripes, no hold ups and solved top left to bottom right. I think the topicality of 17A as it relates to Tom Hicks Junior is entirely fortuitous.

Across
1 PANDEMIC – PAN(MED reversed)IC; The Black Death, Spanish Flu, Hong Kong Flu, etc;
9 HARD,SELL – flogging=selling; SELL sounds like “cell”;
10 FERMAT – FE(RM)AT; Pierre de Fermat 1601-65 who helped to develop calculus and had a famous theorem;
11 CAPITOLINE – (anti-police)*;
12 DELIBERATELY OMITTED – ASK IF PUZZLED;
13 PIED-A-TERRE – PIE(DATE)RRE; Pierre is the capital of South Dakota;
16 KEEP-FIT – KEEP=tower; attack=FIT;
17 STOICAL – S-TO(p)ICAL; very topical if you follow the soap opera that is the sometimes red shirted Liverpool Football Club;
20 EASY,STREET – (qu=question)EASY-STREET;
22 DELIBERATELY OMITTED – ASK IF PUZZLED;
23 STEREOTYPE – (see pottery)*; a stereotype is a printing plate (changed on edit, see comments); nice clue;
25 SHAMAN – (has)*-MAN; a medicine man;
26 KRAKATOA – KRAK-A-TO-A; sounds like “crack a toe” plus “a” (edited following comments); the island that exploded in 1883 killing tens of thousands;
27 RESTYLED – REST-(delay missing “a” reversed);
 
Down
2 ALEHOUSE – A-L(EH)OUSE; what?=EH?;
3 DEMOB-HAPPY – DEMO-B-HAPPY; Grumpy was one of the 7 dwarfs and his mate was HAPPY;
4 MATCH,POINT – two meanings; 1=scoring at duplicate (not rubber) bridge 2=scoring at tennis (an ace away);
5 CHOPPER – C(H)OPPER; short for helicopter;
6 DELIBERATELY OMITTED – ASK IF PUZZLED;
7 SENIOR – (I snore)*; nice clue;
8 BLUEBELL – BLUE=waste; BELL sounds like “belle”;
14 ANTITHESIS – ANTI-THE-SIS; “Without the active opposition of an antithesis working through the dialectic existence is simply an empty task”;
15 EPISTOLARY – (w)E-PISTOL-ARY;
16 KEEPSAKE – KEEP-SAKE; SAKE is Japanese booze, geddit?
18 AMPUTATE – A-M(P)UTATE;
19 NEW,YEAR – NE(WYE)AR; the Wye forms the English-Welsh border;
21 SEESAW – SEE-SAW;
24 OATH – OAT-H; horse=heroin=H;

59 comments on “Times 24,432 Antithesis meets the last theorem”

  1. The definition here must be ‘cut’. Amputate, however, means ‘cut off’ not ‘cut’, as supported by all the dictionaries I have access to.

    Paul S.

    2. I think you’re right – something like “Chop off a penny in change” might have been clearer. On the pragmatic side, I got there but only as my last answer.
  2. 8:06 – good start but enough in there to prevent a really speedy time. Last in was the 22/18 crossing.

    I’m surprised that Jimbo, who’s normally precise if not fussy about homophones, seems to have missed something in 26 – the island doesn’t sound to me like “crack a toe”, but “crack a toe-a” – so the A in the clue has to follow KRAKATO, the bit that does sound like “crack a toe”. This makes it a partial homophone with the homophone part not being a word, which some people don’t like.

    1. My parsing is:
      KRAKATO [(That) sounds = Homophone] + A. Followed by the def. So it’s OK.
      1. That’s exactly what I meant to say (and I usually don’t object to non-word homophones).
        2. I’ve just looked at the blogging notes I made whilst solving and I was supposed to say something about this but missed it out! Anyway thanks both and I’ve edited the blog
  3. Mostly straightforward but my solving time was extended to 50 minutes by the two references specially mentioned by Jimbo, namely Fermat (never heard of him) and Hegel who I had heard of but had no idea what his philosophy was about. I thought of ANTI quite early on and was concerned for a moment that this might turn out to be the “member of family” referred to in the clue as a homophone for “Auntie” but fortunately this was not so.

    I’m hoping that the absence of “boring” authors and poets and the recent lack of references to old songs means these are being stored up for Friday’s puzzle when it’s my turn to write the blog.

    1. Just realised I missed the opportunity to reference The Bluebells of Scotland with memories of earliest piano lessons where it featured in Smallwoods Pianoforte Tutor.
        1. Hi, Ann H,

          Really? How fascinating! I have been researching and it seems this was first published in 1900 and has never been out of print since then. Amazon have new copies for sale for less than £5. I have a pre-1920 (English fingering) edition that belonged to my mother as a child. My own copy with continental fingering, bought in the 1950s, fell to pieces years ago through use.

  4. Um! Doubtful about a number of clues here (my problem probably) but does KEEPSAKE really work? Similary AMPUTATE? Is BLUEBELL entirely fair or plate for STEREOTYPE for that matter. Both will be justified by dictionary searches but still! Pedantry must be catching.
    Reasonable time here but some guesswork (yet more bridge!).
    Enjoyed STOICAL but marginally COD to HARD SELL for its definition.
    1. Understand your point about KEEPSAKE and AMPUTATE. BLUEBELL seems hard but precise, and a STEREOTYPE is a printing plate – I don’t think “plate” means “standard”, so reckon Jimbo solved it by a dodgy route.
  5. 24mins. And I enjoyed all the strange stuff; except for one thing which should be called the elliptical definition. What I mean is: “[comfort] here” (20ac); “[drinks] here” (2dn); “[in] this” (5dn); “[issue] one” (6dn) and “[resolve] now” (19dn).
    None of these really count as literals and may need a bit of a rethink — at least when they’re done in bulk.
  6. Well, I solved the anagram! I was thinking of “boilerplate” I think but agree the setter probably had the printing plate in mind.
  7. was i the only person who put sharon alt spelling for charon, and therefore not finishing. thought a number of very good clues here. cod 3d.
    1. I wasn’t aware of “Sharon” as an alternative spelling for the Styx ferryman. I associate Sharon with the valley in Israel.
    2. Possibly – the ferryman of Hades is usually pronounced with a “K” at the beginning so is more likely to be confused with Karen than Sharon! (I only know this because years ago in the LSE computing room I tried some application called Charon which was supposed to be a technological ferryman to some fiendishly complicated other application whose name I forget, all back in the days of punched cards and cafeteria terminals)
      1. Sorry to be thick (I am new(ish) to this blog), but where does the Charon/Sharon comment fit in today’s puzzle? And to compound my stupidity, please what is the answer to 6d?
        1. SHARON was pendrov’s idea for 25A – has*, + RON – a particular “fellow” rather than a synonym for “fellow”.

          6D is WRIT – something you can issue, hence the oblique def “issue one?”. The wordplay is WRIST (part of arm), losing one letter (“showing singular loss”). When you have to change just one letter in a clue, you don’t necessarily get anything to tell you which one – but WRIS, WIST and so on don’t mean the right thing (even if they mean anything).

        2. 6D is WRIT being “wrist” without “s”. Nothing to do with stupidity, almost certainly inexperience?

          A solver had incorrectly entered “sharon” as the answer to 25A instead of the correct SHAMAN and we were discussing that.

          1. Thanks to both Pete and Jimbo. I am ashamed to say that I am not at all inexperienced, having done the crossword for years. But I sometimes get a complete blind spot about an answer and just can’t get it. I suppose everyone does, and perhaps I’m not dogged enough. It’s always a help to come here – and just to know that the clue is regarded by the mastros as too easy to blog often breaks the barrier.
            1. Does everybody get blind pots – do they ever! You’ll see many comments along those lines here. Almost the universal cure appears to be stand up, walk around, make a cup of coffee, etc and then return. It works for me!
  8. Fairly straightforward. I wondered why the, fairly easy, Amputate was my last in but seeing the comments above I realise it is because of the dodgy definition.

    I wondered about Keepsake but came to the conclusion that it works as a sort of DD if you split it in the right place: (1) Japanese barman would… (2) Have this to remember one by.

    Krakatoa is west of Java but, by the time that the producers of the 1969 film “Krakatoa East of Java” discovered this fact it was too late to change the title.

  9. I’d agree that it was nice to see some fresh things here – a US city that wasn’t NY or LA, and a Scottish flower which not only wasn’t DEE, but actually turned out to be a flower, and not a flowing thing.
  10. DNF, sadly. Had EPIDEMIC for 1 across so didn’t get ALEHOUSE.
    Enjoyed this puzzle after an unpromising start. Began with the downs and SENIOR was first one in. Resorted to aids with five left.
    BLUE = waste is new to me. Barred crossword knowledge?
    ANTITHESIS went in without full understanding of the wordplay.
    COD to DEMOB HAPPY for the Grumpy reference.

    Daniel

    1. Not really. To blue is to squander and it crops up reasonably regularly in the daily puzzle.
  11. I struggled with this for just under an hour, starting from PUSH-UPS at 16ac and ending with AMPUTATE. The PUSH-UPS (push=attack, tower is = up’s, what’s wrong with that?) did me as much good in the solve as they have done in life. I’d never heard of DEMOB-HAPPY, and the Grumpy reference went right over my head; in Australia any grumpy companion would probably get called Happy. Also never heard of Pierre. So, let down by GK and general stupidity. An entertaining solve for all that. COD to HARD SELL.
    1. As so many people have commented on it I’ll mention that AMPUTATE was my last in also. I wasted time trying to make a word meaning “cut” out of “a penny in”. Not much chance of that!
  12. 12:58 here. I put in the E of EPIDEMIC at 1ac before realising it had to be PANDEMIC, so no time wasted there. Last in was AMPUTATE for the same reasons others have given. Never heard of the term DEMOB-HAPPY before, but the wordplay made it easy to get anyway.

    COD to ALEHOUSE, just because I fancy a pint.

  13. I’m quite surprised that so many have not previously come across DEMOB HAPPY. This must be age related. It has obvious military connotations and was common currency when I was school at the end of each term.
  14. Pleasant 15min jog today, with nothing untoward. Can there really be people alive in the world who can do the Times cryptic but have never heard of Fermat and his Last Theorem? Surely not.. its been a film and various books..
    Re AMPUTATE, the OED gives support for the usage amputate = cut without the off. The (long) entry on the verb “to cut” includes several definitions which mean to sever, divide into two or more pieces, or amputate.
    1. CUT/AMPUTATE. Yes, and even the Concise Oxford offers “remove (something) from something larger by using a sharp instrument” as its second definition of “cut”.

      But I’m afraid I don’t care much for your first paragraph which suggests that all people intelligent enough to complete a Times cryptic must therefore know about Fermat and his theorem.

      As it happens I studied and passed Advanced Maths at O-Level(45 years ago) but the subject didn’t particularly interest me so my studies were then concentrated in other directions and I developed other areas of expertise.

      1. I’m sure Jerry didn’t have any ill intent in his comment Jack. Those of us who have had the “how can you have lived and not have heard of poet X” comment thrown at us so often can’t help a little triumphalism now that the boot is on the other foot. In mathematical circles Fermat is well known but outside of that I can understand that folk haven’t come across him.

        As a matter of interest, had you heard of DEMOB HAPPY?

        1. Yes, I’m sure no malice was intended, and Jerry, I apologise if my posting reads as if I was suggesting that.

          And Jimbo, yes, I have known “demob happy” all my life.

      2. Ooh, sorry, it was meant in a jocular way.. Jimbo is right as ever, in that I don’t think there is any word or phrase you/I don’t know, that doesn’t have someone saying “how could you not know that..” sorry again
        1. As a topical example of this, John Julius Norwich in one of his Christmas Crackers gives a mnemonic “Can Queen Victoria eat cold apple pie?” for remembering the Seven Hills of Rome: Capitoline, Quirinal, Viminal, Esquiline, Caelian, Aventine, Palatine – remarking, as he did so “Why does one always forget the Viminal?” 🙂
      3. I yield to no one in my ignorance of math(s), but Fermat’s theorem has a story to go with it that I knew: He left a note that he had solved it and would write down the proof when he got back from a duel, which he didn’t come back from. He figures in Tom Stoppard’s ‘Arcadia’, too.
        I realize there are some solvers who didn’t know of Hegel, but I suspect there were quite a few others who, like me, thought this was a giveaway (I think it and Fermat were my first in): all I know, or want to know, of Hegel is thesis/antithesis/synthesis.
  15. I’m another one who solved AMPUTATE at the end. I made a rather slow start and was glad of ANTITHESIS, which I found easy. I cannot claim to have read Hegel but was vaguely familiar with his ‘thesis’ and ‘antithesis’. I was a bit unsure of CAPITOLINE, so for some time it was very tentative entry. 35 minutes to complete.

    Incidentally, why Scottish flower in 8? As a child living in Bucks I often walked through the “bluebell wood”, where you could hardly see the ground beneath the blue carpet.

    1. Sorry, just repeated your request, dyste. And I’m probably being misled by similar childhood experiences of our own Bluebell Wood in my old corner of Gloucestershire.
    2. I’m not a botanist but as I recall the “real” bluebell also known as the harebell is found mainly in Scotland. The pretty flowers you recall are called the common bluebell in England but are really hyacinths. So all very confusing.
  16. 31:37 .. found this trés tricky, especially PIED-À-TERRE/ BLUEBELL and NEW YEAR/RESTYLED.

    I’ve never associated ‘Scottish’ with ‘bluebell’ and still don’t really understand. Can someone spell it out for the botanically challenged?

    1. My main association of bluebells with Scotland is by way of the song, dear to the heart of trombonists in this famous arangement. The plant concerned is called “harebell” in the rest of the UK, where the common bluebell is being replaced by a Spanish usurper.

      That’s enough bluebells – Ed.

      1. Thanks, all. So, the bluebell’s a harebell, except in Scotland, and also a hyacynth, and Spanish. One of those “sorry I asked” occasions.
    2. The dictionary definition states that “bluebell” is the term used by Scots for “harebell”.

      There are numerous references in Scottish culture to “bluebells”, for example the traditional song “The Bluebells of Scotland” I mentioned in an earlier post. Another example is in the chorus of one of Sir Harry Lauder’s greatest hits “I Love a Lassie:

      I love a lassie, a bonnie bonnie lassie,
      She’s as pure as a lily in the dell,
      She’s sweet as the heather, the bonnie bloomin’ heather,
      Mary, my Scots bluebell.

  17. I found this a bit of a struggle taking nearly 50 minutes. There were no really difficult clues. It was obviously my ability that was lacking.

    Last in were CAPITOLINE and WRIT, mainly because I wasn’t sure which way round the L and the T should go. ALEHOUSE and and BLUEBELL also took a lot longer than they should.

    The scientific clues gave no problem. Unlike some others, I don’t look forward to a literary onslaught in future.

  18. A pleasurable although ultimately frustrating puzzle. Two thirds completed within the hour. Didn’t help that my first in was 1 ac EPIDEMIC; 9 ac determined = HELL BENT and 3 d I was fixated on dopey (rather than happy). Hopefully my favourite mathematician Fibonacci will turn up some day.
  19. Bad brain day. Never heard of DEMOB HAPPY, got the first part from the wordplay and settled on DEMOB DOPEY as the most likely dwarf. That left me struggling at 12, put in CUR,D and decided to call it a night. Oh boy, Thursday’s blog might be half empty the way I’m going!
  20. A pretty quick solve for me, about 15 minutes with no hold-ups, first in PANDEMIC, last, like many others, AMPUTATE. The wordplay was very clear in most places, so I could navigate despite the following gaps in knowledge: did not know DEMOB-HAPPY, flog as ‘sell’, STEREOTYPE as ‘plate’, what Hegel wrote about, or the R. Wye. I also liked a lot of clues, including the Grumpy/Happy connection, the KRAKATOA homophone, 15, and 19. Nice puzzle all round. Regards.
  21. Unfinished. Fairly sped through most of this in about 10 minutes then came to a brickwall with AMPUTATE and ran out of (lunch)time. I was able to construe what the wordplay was going to but just had a complete blank.The only words I could see that would fit were aspirate or amperage – how I couldn’t then make the small step to see the right answer… I don’t know. Just a bad day at the office.
  22. DNF. I didn’t get ALEHOUSE, STOICAL or AMPUTATE. I didn’t associate bluebells with Scotland, but the name of the song does ring a bell. I’ve never heard of BLUE as meaning ‘waste’, I read the clue as a double homophone: ‘waste’ being ‘blew’, which sounds like BLUE.

    I’m not as upset as some of you as AMPUTATE, despite not getting it. Chambers gives CUT as ‘1 tr & intr (also cut something off or out) to slit, pierce, slice or sever (a person or thing) using a sharp instrument.’ ‘Cut’ as ‘sever’ seems OK to me normal use in for instance ‘As to the thief, Male or female, cut off his or her hands’.

    1. Reading this again: there’s obviously a difference between ‘cut’ and ‘cut off’… Now I’m not so sure, it does seem to fail the substitution test.
    2. ‘waste’ being ‘blew’: You shouldn’t need to change tense like that – either ‘waste’ is ‘blow’ or ‘wasted’ is ‘blew’, neither of which fits for this clue.
  23. Only had a few minutes left at the start of lunch to look at this and only had 3 solved after 6 minutes. Picked it up again at home this evening and filled in the rest in a further 14 or so minutes (with amputate last in).

    Anyway, I absolutely loved this puzzle finding it full of wit and originality so thanks very much to the setter. So many candidates for COD but I’ll plump for alehouse as eh/what is one of my favourite devices.

  24. …so ALEHOUSE followed but AMPUTATE never did scan in my brain although, with quite a stretch, I can accept it. On second thought, no. All in all about 25 minutes with those three exceptions.
    I enjoyed it immensely. Now to today’s.

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